Living in More Than One World,

On September 30, The Drucker Institute announced the winner of the 2016 $100,000 Drucker Prize: ImproveCareNow Network. The Institute says that the winning organization has “transformed health and care by enabling patients, families, clinicians and researchers to collaboratively improve knowledge and outcomes related to Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. It engages these stakeholders in a learning health network that provides real-time quality improvement, research and community-building for children with these conditions.”

The prize, which has been given since 1991, reflects two particular areas of focus within the long career of Peter Drucker: innovation and the strength of nonprofit organizations, and what businesses can learn from them.

For my third and final preview post about the fast-approaching WorldFuture 2016, marking the 50th anniversary of the World Future Society, I’m focusing on the segment in which I’ll participate, the Unconference. It will be held this Saturday morning, July 23rd, from 8:00-9:30 AM, when I’ll facilitate a discussion on the future of leadership.

Because of the format, I won’t get to listen to any of the other discussions, which all look interesting. I’m unfamiliar with the other discussion leaders, other than my fellow Berrett-Koehler author Laura Goodrich, whose topic is Creating a Mindset for Change.

But I hope to meet as many of my fellow discussion leaders as possible over the course of the weekend, and perhaps collect some handouts for future reference.

WorldFuture 2016, the conference marking the 50th anniversary of the World Future Society, is rapidly approaching. Last week, I wrote my first of three blog posts previewing the conference, where I’ll facilitate a discussion on the future of leadership during the Unconference segment on July 23rd, from 8:00-9:30 AM.

Along with the keynote speakers I noted last week, there are many other speakers, panelists and Unconference session facilitators who will contribute to making this a great conference. It’s going to be tough making choices about which of the many concurrent sessions to attend, but here are some that look particularly intriguing:

The Drucker Institute recently gave a new name for, and a new twist to the nonprofit innovation award it gives annually. What’s now called the Drucker Prize will still award $100,000 to the winning nonprofit organization, and the 2016 prize applications are now open. The new twist is a special learning platform that will be available to applicants. According to the Institute’s website, it “blends the timeless wisdom of Peter Drucker with the thinking of some of today’s brightest management minds.” The 2015 prize winner was Kids v Cancer.

A major theme running through the June 26 American Bar Association Criminal Justice Section National Institute on Bitcoin and Other Digital Currencies in Washington, D.C. was how to balance regulation compliance and law enforcement while allowing for innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit that has flourished around the bitcoin ecosystem in its short existence.

The ABA’s write-up of the event focuses mainly on the remarks of the two keynote speakers, U.S. Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell, who heads the criminal division; and Jamal El-Hindi, the recently named deputy director of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

The cover of the June Fast Company magazine is the fifth 100 Most Creative People in Business feature. This had to be a massive project, especially since the ground rules include that there can be no repeats from previous lists, and the 100 people also could not have been profiled by the magazine previously.

Studying the profiles on this list, both in the beautifully-designed magazine and in the enhanced online version, is a great way to learn about how highly creative people are making a difference in a variety of fields. It is especially good for learning about new people and relatively unfamiliar companies, along with the more recognizable names.

It’s not surprising that the new book Contagious: Why Things Catch On, by Jonah Berger, is itself catching on and getting lots of attention. Berger, who is in his early 30s, is the James G. Campbell Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He studies and teaches about how and why products and ideas go viral and get other forms of attention, both online and offline. These days it’s not only companies and other organizations that have to continually get the word out in effective ways about their offerings. Individuals have to do it too, and the marketplace is crowded, confusing and noisy.

Fortune’s January 14, 2013 edition is The Future Issue; with around one-quarter of the pages devoted to the topic. The magazine explores various dimensions of what tomorrow might be like rooted in work and effort taking place in the present. The centerpiece feature (eight pages long) is “Larry Page Looks Ahead,” about the Google CEO/co-founder’s vision for the company and its potential game-changer initiatives like self-driving cars. The article, by Miguel Helft, portrays a company in constant motion, reinventing itself 24/7; appropriate for a service that has to be always available, with no exceptions or downtime.

Other features include “Meet Your Next Surgeon,” on robotics in the operating room, such as the da Vinci, from the Silicon Valley company Intuitive Surgical.

January is a great month for introspection, especially about one elusive subject: what really drives success? There are innumerable guides in this area, and there is no shortage of people who have and will continue to offer advice. If you’re open to the idea of the random nature of success, the involvement of luck and the serendipity factor behind it, the work of Frans Johansson provides a sense of hope and a set of strategies.

Matthew E. May delivers lots of timely and relevant information in The Laws of Subtraction: 6 Simple Rules for Winning in the Age of Excess Everything, his engaging new book about doing better work and living more productively and meaningfully. As the title suggests, Matt stresses the value of thoughtfully and strategically paying attention to what is not essential and can be eliminated; the creative importance of emptiness and negative space; and the power of intelligently working within constraints. This is his fourth book since 2006, on top of leading his own Los Angeles-based “ideas agency,” Edit Innovation, and lots of public speaking and blogging.…